LETTER TO EDITOR: Gun laws without enforcement are meaningless, so why add new ones?

The following was written by Guns.com reader Thomas Lemont, who permitted Guns.com to publish it.

Most people believe that laws are made with the supposition that rational people shall abide by them, but why would rational people require instruction on how to behave rationally? It’s a paradox because criminals don’t obey laws and rational people shouldn’t require them.

So then, why are laws even created? Simply put, they are a testament of past misdeeds, whether or not they are our own. For example, it was BECAUSE people had been driving at unsafe speeds that “speed limit” signs were found to be necessary. Laws are generally implemented after problems come to light, yet not all laws will always apply to all people all of the time.

There are usually two kinds of people who obey laws: first, you have those who obey from fear related to the threat of punishment for transgression, and you also have those who follow a natural law of morality. The difference is that the first group generally complies with written law, while the second group complies with law of the heart, or spirit, if you will. While both police themselves, it is the first group who would break the law, if they felt a reasonable chance they could get away with it. Most of us fall somewhere in between these two groups.

As an FFL, I can tell you that there are already literally hundreds of laws in the books. However, without enforcement, they are meaningless. A law can be written with all the legal mumbo-jumbo in the world, but if the individual chooses not to obey, then that law does not exist to them. Certainly they may be punished after the fact, but the law itself has no power to make them obey. Law needs authority behind it, enforcement, otherwise it’s simply vapor. True enforcement of the law comes from the individual.

Criminals become so because they have chosen to be immoral, therefore adding more gun laws will not suddenly make them moral.